


Gentle Way of Calming

by spaceleviathan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony first starting hearing voices when he was seven. Since then, his hallucinations have been his only comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gentle Way of Calming

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading http://archiveofourown.org/works/665623?view_full_work=true when this happened. The concept of crazy Tony was too much to resist. I've literally spent the last three days fixating on this, and I think the end of the last chapters of one of my other fics suffered a little for it. Dammit, Tony, you're ruining everything.  
> Anyway, onwards.

The first symptoms appeared when Tony was seven and a lonely, brilliant child wanting more than just a few mechanical trinkets to keep him company.

He didn't tell anyone about the soft voice in his head, because after three weeks it was no longer strange. The voice, male and melodic, was another part of him, as his intelligence was, as his dark hair and brown eyes were. It was just a hidden extension of himself - an echo in his head to keep him safe, comforted, calm. The voice, his unseen companion, was the reason Tony felt so proud of his creations, since it offered him praise where his own parents often neglected to.

He didn't realise he was growing distant from them until his mother found out about the voice in his brain; an accident, caused by a mindless slip-of-the-tongue. One which quickly had him in a room with a doctor and a clip-board, which ultimately led to Thorazine and weekly check-ups.

Much to his parent's delight, the doctor's surprise and Tony's distress, the voice disappeared after only a single course of the drugs. Despite a few brief (and panic-inducing, on his mother's behalf) episodes, some of which barely lasting a day, Tony was back on course to do his father proud by getting into MIT early, by being the best of everyone, by proving to the world how capable he was before he'd even reached adulthood.

Until there was another incident.

It was James Rhodes, nicknamed Rhodey after one too many drinks and Tony's imagination taking a suicide leap after the fifth round, who eventually stumbled across the fact Tony was schizophrenic. The older boy had taken Tony under his wing already, but it was after opening the door to find Tony chatting amicably to himself that truly proved how much of a friend Rhodey was.

Not that Tony was talking to himself. No, Tony had seen the return of the voices at episodic occasions throughout his childhood, but never visual hallucinations. The only way he knew the dark-haired man sitting at the foot of his bed was not real was the fact his answers were spoken in that exact same tone which was so immediately soothing to Tony's nerves.

Tony allowed him to slot straight into his life, taking him to lectures and lunch and for long walks just to talk, ignoring the way people stared at him and pointed figures.

It was when his father caught wind of it (a concerned lecturer contacting his parents and tipping them off to Tony's most recent psychotic break) that forced the genius back into a doctor's office for another round of pills.

"These are atypical," she said, writing out the prescription and thrusting it into his hands, ignoring his scowl. "You should get less side-effects."

"If I'm not upset by my hallucinations, do I have the right to steal these pills from people who need them more?" Tony tried, but she ignored him, acting under orders from his father.

"I realise that you feel as if your hallucinations are friendly, Tony," she said softly. "But they may not always remain that way."

He looked to his invisible companion, who only smiled at him, shaking his head.

"I would never," the hallucination told him later that night, quietly into the silent room after Tony had bid him goodnight.

"I know." He replied, having already regretfully started the newest course of medication only minutes earlier.

The effects were almost immediate. The hallucination, tall and thin and out of place in even this eclectic environment, disappeared completely after three days. He didn't fill out his prescription again once the first round was finished, and his hallucination didn't return.

Rhodey was there for him the first time it hit him how large an absence his hallucination had left in his life. He was hyperaware that he wasn't real, but that didn't make Tony feel any better. Rhodey, with strong arms for hugging and infinite patience for when Tony broke down, did. He helped Tony more than any doctor had ever done for him.

His father had been particularly distressed to find that the doctor had screened him for a personality test whilst they had been talking over his condition.

"They can't decide whether I'm narcissistic, histrionic, or borderline." He informed Rhodey after going to talk to her over results.

"What are we talking about?"

"Personality disorders."

"Aren't you already schizophrenic?"

"Yep. Apparently that's not enough for them."

"Your dad's gonna hate that."

"He's convinced that pissing him off is the only reason I have for being recurrently mentally ill."

"I don't know. A narcissistic, borderline, histrionic schizophrenic _does_ seem a little out there."

"Tell that to my doctor. I'm quite happy with being a narcissistic schizophrenic."

"I can attest to that, if you'd like."

The first Rhodey had heard that Tony Stark was mentally ill, the first _anyone_ had heard that Tony Stark was mentally ill, had been when the man had found him babbling to his hallucination. The first time he truly learnt to appreciate the strain it put on Tony was when he found himself embracing the younger boy and trying to calm the panicked sobs. By now, it was no more than another thing to needle each other about.

 _You're crazy_ , Rhodey would say, to which Tony would reply: _Yes. What's your excuse?_

And that was all Tony could ask for, really, in place of the cool, calming voice inside his head.

\--

Tony was actually incredibly happy when his parents died. He wasn't happy _about_ his parents dying of course, because no matter how much Howard and Tony bickered, Howard was still his dad, but rather that the incident didn't cause another schizophrenic episode. He had been waiting anxiously since he first learnt of the car crash, waiting for the world to turn on him and make everything ten times worse. So, when nothing happened, Tony was rightfully elated.

However, it was a feeling that didn't last long.

He'd not had a single incident since the first year of college when Rhodey had first discovered his dirty little secret, and that was fine by him. Eventually, anyway, it was fine by him. Going day by day without seeing things that weren't real enlightened Tony to how dependent he had become on the voice in his mind, and the constant, over-watching eyes of his hallucination. Any time apart from it was therefore a monumentally good thing.

He kept a bottle of antipsychotics in his medicine cabinet regardless, just in case. They'd been immediately on hand for the last week after his parents died.

Relief replaced grief; relief that he wasn't going crazier than before. It was a feeling he'd much rather focus on than his bereavement, so that was where his attentions lay. If anyone criticised him for the apparent lack of care over the passing of Maria and Howard, they weren't Rhodey or Obie, and that was all that mattered to Tony.

Obie was especially supportive, telling Tony it was better to make sure he was healthy at such a terrible time in his life. Forget what everyone else said he should do: do only what his parents would want. Obie insisted that they would have wanted Tony sane and happy.

But Tony wasn't sane and happy. Tony hadn't been sane and happy since he was a child. The entire reason that he and his father had been at odds all these years revolved around the fact Tony was only sane and happy when he had a hallucination to keep him company.

Eventually, he remembered that. He recalled that he needed something more than Rhodey's sad looks and Obie's caring words. He needed his hallucinations, and became furious after the first fortnight following his parents' passing that they were not coming back.

\--

He took control of the company without any hiccoughs, and it wasn't until Pepper had been working for him for over a year and a half that the voice returns.

It was perhaps not the best time, in the middle of a dreary meeting with Obie on his left and the board stretching out in front of him, but he was already zoning out even before the abrupt smooth tone invaded his thoughts.

 _This is tedious,_ it said. _We should leave._

Tony wish he could have, but it would have seemed too suspicious to simply abandon the meeting right then and there, no matter how eccentric they already knew him to be.

He didn't want to give any hints away either of his unstable mindset, so couldn't react to the noise in his head. At the table only Obie knew of Tony's condition and, out of fear of losing his job, he'd like to keep it that way.

 _Dull, boring. You have better things to do with your time_. The voice didn't stop, and Tony tried to drown it out. It resulted in a few annoyed glances, mostly from the board members thinking Tony was hung over, which was admittedly true. Obie's gaze was more questioning and soft.

 _Get out of here,_ the voice demanded of him as soon as the meeting drew to an end, and for once Tony could see why other schizophrenics found distress in their hallucinations. The voice sounded so urgent that it instilled an instinctive sense of paranoia in the inventor and made him want to turn tail and run as far as he could away from this room.

But Obie caught his arm as the board shuffled out, and Tony only weakly resisted the tug of his friend and guardian.

"You okay, Tony?"

Tony shook his head, because _no_ , he wasn't. The voice was hissing at him now, saying _You'll miss me, you have to leave **now**. Whatare you still doing in there?_ And Tony understood what the doctor had meant all those years ago when she said the hallucinations may turn on him.

"I'm scared, Obie," he admitted, and two things happened in sync: One was that Obie put his arms around Tony tightly, trying to keep him calm, and the other was that the voice in his mind immediately sweetened.

 _Don't be scared, Tony, don't be scared. You're not crazy. Take your pills_.

"He's telling me to take the pills."

"Maybe you should listen to him." Obie advised, instructing him to call Pepper and take the antipsychotics.

 _You've missed me,_ the voice said. _But it's alright. I'll be back._

"Are you sure?" He asked the voice, but Obie answered in its place.

"Yeah, Tony. You'll feel better with them."

Which was the incident which led to his PA finding out the truth. She had been rightfully furious with him for not telling her in the first place.

"Schizophrenics scare people off." He shrugged.

"What, just in case your _charming_ personality didn't do the trick?" She growled at him, pacing in front of his couch where he had slumped in what Rhodey had taken to calling his 'post-pill depression'. He couldn't help the way that taking his medication felt like he was murdering an essential part of him, but Pepper distracting him with her temper was certainly keeping his mind away from it.

"It never came up." He shrugged, defensive. "Did you want me to just drop the bomb apropos of nothing over tea and biscuits? _Oh, by the way, Miss Potts, I sometimes hear things that aren't real_."

"I'd have preferred it to suddenly being sent on a prescription errand because you had a sudden relapse."

"I don't have them often. Not since college, actually."

"If I'd have known I'd have been able to look for signs." Pepper insisted, coming to stand in front of him and glare down at him very seriously. "Mr. Stark, it is my job to look after you, and it is in everyone's best interest that I know these things."

"Potts, I'm fine. It's never bothered me before. My hallucinations aren't harmful." Or they weren't before today. Tony was still trying to wrap his head around the terror he had felt when the voice became agitated at him.

Pepper just sighed, nodding sharply to herself and sitting down next to him. "You have to tell me everything so I can keep an eye on you."

Tony complied after a vague attempt at resistance, but to no avail. Pepper was not about to put up with anything less than the truth at this point.

"Anything else I should know about?"

"The jury is still out about my narcissistic personality disorder. They think I'm self-loathing enough to be self-obsessed."

"You don't need a doctor to diagnose your elevated ego, Mr. Stark."

"I love you too, Miss Potts."

His next incident, which Pepper was around for, scared her a little bit. Again, it was merely the voice, come to say hello one evening when Pepper was forcing paperwork on him.

 _Dull._ It startled Tony, and although his nerves were on fire he recovered quickly.

"Can I do it later?" He asked his assistant, not wanting to aggravate his hallucination as he had last time. "I'd just like to get some air."

 _A poor lie, Tony. You can do better than that._ Tony wanted nothing more than to tell the voice to be quiet, but he was unable to with the way Pepper's eyes narrowed and all her attention focused on him.

"We're almost done." She tried to convince him, but that was an even weaker lie than Tony's. He could _see_ how much left there was to do.

 _You should leave_.

"I can't leave." He hissed, startling his assistant.

"You just said you wanted to." She replied, and he shook his head miserably.

"I meant that," he faltered. "I wasn't talking to-"

She understood then, her eyes widening in comprehension.

_Tony. Outside._

"Do you need your pills?"

_No, Tony. No pills. You need to go outside._

Tony nodded at her, wincing when the hallucination said his name sharply in anger.

"I thought you said your delusions weren't harmful."

"I lied." He amended, and she frowned at him.

 _I'm not harmful, you ridiculous-_ the voice, of all things, cut itself short. The inventor listened avidly for the next sentence, watching Pepper as she watched him, both fearful of what was coming.

 _Outside,_ the hallucination ordered again. _Please_.

"I need to leave." He stood sharply, terrified by his own mind but surprised by the pleading tone the voice had undertaken. The urgency was still behind it, but it was the same soothing tone from when he was a boy. It immediately relaxed his muscles and made him want to listen to the words.

He didn't stop to grab his coat, nor even his shoes, as he headed straight for the door and walked out into the evening air. But he had apparently taken too long, since the voice returned only once more.

 _You missed me_ , it said again.

Returning back inside, Pepper was already waiting with his meds and a glass of orange juice.

\--

After that, since she had seen the onset first hand, Pepper took his episodes in her stride, calmly and sensibly. She stumbled across him once or twice at home, such as when Tony found himself discussing recipes with the dark haired hallucination who had come back into his life with no excuse for his previous actions but a smile and a shrug. It wiped away Tony's fears in an instant.

"You don't make an omelette like that, Tony." He smiled, but didn't reach to assist him, either. "Cooking is not like engineering. It isn't as complicated as you're forcing it to be."

But Pepper didn't hear this. All she heard was the genius' reply: "Well, at least  I can touch the cutlery and try. Can hallucinations interact with the environment? I think _not_. You're just a ghost trapped inside my head."

"A ghost?" She asked him, coming to look critically at his attempts in the kitchen. Admittedly, the omelette did _not_ look like it did in the recipe book. "Do you think your hallucinations are based on someone?"

"Like my dad?" He asked, looking to the dark haired man critically for a long moment. The hallucination, in reply, simply shrugged. "No. He's nothing like him."

"I didn't mean your parents. Perhaps just anyone. Someone you saw in a crowd, or lost before you could remember them?"

"I think breakfast time is too early to try to dig into my psychological issues." He interrupted, and she conceded.

"Are you doing to take your meds now or later?"

The man stared at him when Tony glanced to him guiltily. "I can't imagine I'll be gone for long." He pointed out.

"At least sit with us for breakfast. I'm not going to kick you out before the day has even started."

Pepper snorted, sitting down with a cup of coffee and a Stark tablet. "You treat your hallucinations better than the people you sleep with."

"He's more fun."

Tony didn't take his pills until late that night, having spent the day showing his hallucination around his lab, answering any questions the man may have, and sharing lunch and dinner discussing stupid and surprisingly philosophical issues. But Tony supposed that was the most he could do for someone he'd known his entire life.

\--

Pepper asks Rhodey once  how he had dealt with Tony's hallucinations. Rhodey had said she should be glad she'd never seen a full-blown episode.

Rhodey had said it was better when Tony wasn't hearing the voices, for reasons more than the glaringly obvious. One was that Tony was calmer and more rational without them, and another was that they encouraged Tony to do reckless things.

With them, Tony was manic. Tony was manic anyway, that was writ deep into his DNA, but Rhodey meant _clinically_ manic. Just another thing to add to his list of mental dysfunctions.

But then, Pepper had returned with the worst thing she could have thought to say: "I always feel guilty when I give him the pills."

"Why?"

"Not at first," she corrected herself, because the first few minor episodes had ended in Tony shaking and angry and screaming and punching things. But after he'd made peace with his hallucination again, Pepper's conscience started pushing itself into overtime. "He just seems... happier with them."

Rhodey had agreed.

"When he had his major episode in college I didn't figure it out for ages. But what clued me into the fact something was wrong was the way he was relaxed and carefree - more so than I'd ever seen him before or since. Besides his delusions, the only thing that does that to him are his AIs."

And Tony had overheard, sitting against the wall in the next room over. He didn't want them to know he had eavesdropped, so kept quiet and listened as they discussed the moral implications in keeping Tony sane, or keeping Tony happy.

He didn't know which one he'd prefer, either.

\--

Tony woke up on a table in a cave, and a man in glasses explained how he'd died. Not almost, but _actually_ died. He said it was a miracle Tony had started breathing again, even if it did mean he had a car battery hooked up to his chest for the rest of his life.

The voice was with him as soon as he started to move, advising him against it, hissing at him dangerously when he strained himself too far.

Tony only listened when Yinsen joined in with his own protests. "You're not strong enough yet, Stark."

_You're weak. **Weak** , Tony._

Tony didn't like how defenceless he was here, nor the fact this hyper-stressful situation had stimulated a long, painful and continuous schizophrenic episode. He didn't have his pills and he couldn't tell the doctor - this man who was putting his faith in the inventor so completely.

The last thing Tony needed was Yinsen looking at him as if he was a nutcase. He needed that even less than the voice consistently yelling at him for the smallest things.

 _I'm trying to look after you_.

"You're not helping." He said into the silent room, and Yinsen sent him a confused glance. Tony waved him away. " _See_?" He whispered.

 _Outside_ , the voice was that same urgent tone as before. _Outside, Tony_.

And when they did drag him outside, bag over his head and stumbling his way down twisted corridors before they pushed him into the sun, Tony only just resisted asking, _Did I miss you again?_

 _Tony,_ the voice cooed. _Tony._

The inventor looked around at his weapons, then to the terrorist smiling at him, throwing his arms open and offering a deal. Tony, however, was distracted by a slither of black against the golden sand, and a pale figure with dark hair watching him from just beyond the crevice of the rocks.

His hallucination had yet to visit him in visual form inside the cave, but there he was now, watching over Tony with piercing eyes.

"They say they'll let you free." Yinsen translated, and Tony dragged his attention back to the man in front of him, smiling and shaking his hand.

"No, he won't." His gaze flickered back to his hallucination as he said so. The man nodded as Yinsen did.

"No, he won't."

\--

 _Clever, Tony, clever_. The voice flickered around the cave, and if Tony focused hard enough he thought he could almost see fingers stroke over the unassembled parts of the armour he was going to use to get out.

"Do you think it'll work?" He asked it lowly, not because he was scared of failure, but because he had always trusted the voice's opinions.

 _You stand more of a chance with this than compliance,_ the voice said. Tony couldn't argue with that.

And then the time came. And then Yinsen ran out of the cave with a gun.

"Yinsen!" Tony screamed after him, receiving no reply. "Yinsen!"

 _Outside_ , the voice demanded as footsteps drew neared. _Get outside_.

But it wasn't that easy. By the time he had found himself at the mouth of the cave, he let loose his last weapon bar the flamethrowers to stop the leader of the Ten Rings from further hurting Tony or his friend. And when Yinsen told him to use his second chance wisely before slipping away to be reunited with his family, Tony just about went into mental lock down.

 _Tony,_ the voice said. _Come outside. I'm waiting for you._

"Come in here." He returned bitterly, choking on his words as he tried to think his way out. "Help me. I'm going to die."

 _No, you're not_. The voice was vicious, snappish, scaring Tony more than any array of weapons waiting outside for him could. _Stand up, Stark._

"I can't. The only way out is to fly out and I'm going to kill myself, just by landing. And that's if I'm not already dead by then."

_Have faith._

"In what? In God?" He glanced to Yinsen, looking as peaceful in death as he deserved, and felt furious by the notion.

_Not in God, who has failed you and him. But in me._

"You're a hallucination."

 _To you, perhaps_. _Stand up,_ the voice repeated. _You are strong enough_.

And Tony did feel it, a sudden surge of strength from within, and with another gentle nudge from his auditory hallucination Tony allowed confidence to seep into every limb and push him forwards.

 _I'm here_ , the voice said, close to his ear and abounding in his head. _I'm here, don't be scared_.

"I'm not scared," he returned, even as the terrorists open-fired on his armour.

 _Leave now_.

"I've just got to destroy the weapons, dear," he said, as the bullets died down and the air became tense.

 _Just leave_.

"No." And with it, he set the bastards on fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his hallucination, in the same place he was before, staring at him with a blank face. The hallucination followed him with his eyes as Tony thrust his boosters into the air and landed a mile out. Seconds later the man was looming over him, casting his face into shade as Tony tore the helmet from his head.

"That was reckless." The man chided, and Tony grinned.

"I did it."

"Spectacular." He groused, observing the mess Tony had made and the still audible screams from the camp they had so recently left. Tony saw the shift in his expression.

"You mean it, don't you?" He said, delighted. "You actually think I did pretty well."

"You're alive." The hallucination pointed out, stepping back as Tony pulled himself up with no shortage of groans and aches. "Some may argue that's disappointing."

"What would happen to you if I died?"

The hallucination watched him very seriously, making Tony regret asking the question. It really should have been obvious: without Tony's mind working, the man would die with him. Not that a hallucination should care about that since he wasn't even real.

"Right." He said, nodding, which was about as apologetic as Tony got. "We should get out of here."

"They're looking for you." The man said, falling behind as Tony started on his trek into the seemingly endless desert.

"That's good. We'll be out of here in no time-" But Tony looked back, and the hallucination was gone. "Don't leave me alone out here," he moaned, because too much had happened all at once. The inventor really needed some company to keep his mind away from more awful contemplations, like Yinsen's death, how a terrorist group got his weapons, or Tony's potential demise in the middle of Afghanistan. But he knew his hallucinations didn't work like that, the temperamental wankers, and he was starting to give up on understanding their schedule.

"Thanks a lot." He instead muttered into the empty air, to no reply.

\--

He saw the man next when he heard the news report about the Ten Rings, and he knew what Stane was up to. Tony was down in his labs, staring hatefully at himself, before breaking the glass furiously with his repulsors. He glared down at the mess, satisfied and glad to see his responsible, helpless reflection gone with it, as a plan began forming in his mind.

As if on cue to try and talk him down from his stupidest of ideas, when he turned around his hallucination was waiting for him, lounging on the sofa Tony had recently abandoned.

He didn't say anything. He just watched the playboy dispassionately, waiting for him to speak.

"I'm going to save them." Tony eventually confided, and the eyes of both men flickered to the TV where the report about Gulmira was still playing.

"Why?" His hallucination answered, as calm as ever, that voice exactly the same as every previous incident.

"Because it's my fault."

"No, it's not. It's Stane's." And despite himself, Tony felt like a burden had been lifted. Christine, the blond reporter from Brown, accused him as if he had deliberately done it. He couldn't help how that stung, especially since he had considered it true. And yet here was someone he trusted more than anyone else in the world, despite the fact it was only his own subconscious, telling him he was not the reason these people had died at all.

"I can't prove it," Tony explained, because even though he felt lighter than he had since before Afghanistan, there were still human beings suffering at the hands of men with his weapons and he could not simply sweep that under the rug. "I can only help them."

His hallucination paused a while, shifting his stance so he was leaning forward, closer to Tony with his eyebrows creased. "You are different," he said. "You have changed so much."

"Good." Tony said, even though in the next instant the room was entirely devoid of his schizophrenia-induced vision. He was left nodding to himself, muttering, "That's good." Because it was. Any step away from the ignorant man he had been was progress in Tony's eyes.

\--

Stane pointed out a difference in his eyes when he stole the arc reactor from Tony's chest. How, inexplicably, they were now green. Tony didn't understand, and while Stane shook it off, having sworn they were once brown, Tony was paralysed and spent the next few minutes having seven various things to freak out about. Admittedly, his eyes changing colour for no good reason after almost forty years was strange, but he was more concerned with Pepper who was in three tons of shit. A brief glance to his reflection before he flew out to save her ensured that Stane had probably been seeing things, and Rhodey didn't mention anything either so Tony didn't think about it again.

At least not until he completely blacked out when Stane surprised him by not being dead from the icy fall. The next thing Tony was aware of was waking up in the hospital with Pepper looming over him, fretting.

"Oh, god, I thought you'd died!" And so had Tony, because his fear had been so sharp and so sudden, it had almost felt as if he'd been torn straight from his body.

It was another two unexplainable instances of Tony blacking out but not dying (despite both involving life-threatening situations) before the doctor was brought back in, tutting over his file in exasperation.

"Dissociative Identity Disorder?" Tony said with a scoff. "Are you kidding me? What, and all those other things wrong with me are just for shit and giggles? I thought the statistics of getting two kinds of disease were phenomenally small. Occam's razor, all that."

"We think it's to do with your schizophrenia," the doctor admitted with a heavy breath. "Although they're not often correlated, there is a possibility that your delusions have developed into personalities."

Tony wasn't buying it. Whilst the doctors had always said schizophrenia shouldn't work the way Tony's did, which Tony had enjoyed since it had split him apart from the masses further than he already was, this really was a step too far.

"You can't remember significant chunks of your life." Pepper insisted and Tony frowned at her.

"That's trauma. They were _traumatic_ chunks of my life. Personally, I'm _glad_ I don't remember the incident with Stane."

"You don't remember meeting Fury." Rhodey pointed out.

"Who's Fury?"

"He said he surprised you, soon after Stane died. Showed up one night and you didn't react well."

"I was still in shock, Rhodey, you can't blame me for not remembering some guy who dropped by unannounced. Nor can you blame me for kicking him straight back out the front door."

"You didn't kick him out the front door, though," Rhodey said. "You kicked him out of the _window_."

That gave Tony pause, because he felt like he should be able to remember that.

"How is that even possible? Without my suit I can't even pick people up."

"Apparently your alter-ego can."

Tony sighed, the thought terrifying him as much as when the voice in his head became snappy with him. It was on this fear that allowed him to agree to the therapy course he avidly hated even the sound of.

They wanted him to get some Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, along with keep on his anti-psychotics. Neither did anything to help him, and he gave up on the CBT soon after starting. The hallucinations came when they wanted to, and his second personality showed up in only the most stressful of situations. It was theorised that it was a defence mechanism, since when the inventor shifted into this other individual a lot of Tony's own personality melted away with it. His moral compass was all but lost, his ability to murder people (as he had Stane, whom he had considered a father-figure throughout most of his life) was enriched, and his ability to look after himself was likewise heightened. Tony, at the best of times, was on the verge of self-destructive, so it was strange for his friends to suddenly see him shift into a sudden savage self-preservation mode.

When his eyes went green it wasn't always when he blacked out. Sometimes, as when Stane had pointed it out, Tony was aware and conscious, with his senses sharpened and feeling stronger than ever. It had been a good plan on Obie's part to paralyse him beforehand, else Tony would have felt completely comfortable with taking out every new-found well of energy upon the man threatening his family.

Pepper and Rhodey had to point it out to him several times before he accepted the truth of the change, however. Tony liked the truth; he was in a long-term love affair with it, actually, but he still needed hard evidence to support every hypothesis, which was harder to get than people would believe. When his eyes shifted in hue it wasn't always the best time to look in the mirror. Usually, it was actually worst.

No one could truly explain it, which was another reason why Tony had been hesitant to believe.

"It's just adrenaline," he'd try to tell the both of them, making them think they'd been seeing things. "It's how I feel when I have my hallucination. I'm so one-hundred percent positive he's real, but I know he isn't."

They insisted he was wrong, which eventually revealed itself to be correct. In his defence, he did try to apologise.

\--

Natalie walked in on his next schizophrenic episode, right before his birthday bash, when he was nursing an outrageously expensive whiskey and miserably talking to his dark-haired delusion.

The man was sitting on the sofa, stretched across it gracefully, long legs dangling off the end. His hands cradled his own drink, which he sipped delicately, listening whilst Tony tried to figure out what to do with the remaining days of his life.

"Mr. Stark?" Natalie asked, startling Tony but not his hallucination, and Tony didn't even bother trying to explain away the situation. Pepper had probably already told her, since Natalie was working so closely with him and watching over him whilst Miss Potts was going through the transition of long-suffering  PA to long-suffering CEO.

The man had gone by the time Tony looked up, but he didn't feel any better or less conflicted over the rest of his distressingly short life, so turned to his new assistant instead for answers.

Only a few days later, he apparently went through another physical change. However, he was conscious all the while, feeling as normal as usual, fighting for his life against a psychotic Russian and an idiotic competitor.

Natalie - or Natasha Romanoff, whatever her sneaky spy name was - saw it happen. She was intrigued, crowding his space simply to shine a light in his eye when the danger has passed and Pepper was still calming down, before snapping a picture for Tony's sake.

Jesus, his eyes _were_ green. He'd seen them before like it, briefly, but never so clearly. They were vividly emerald, shining unnaturally, and Tony rather liked that shade, assuming it wasn't on him. On him it just seemed eerie.

"That's weird." He pointed out, a tad inanely, passing the agent back her phone. "I don't like it."

Which were apparently the magic words since, after that, nothing. Every symptom, bar those which constantly played into the idea of his narcissistic personality disorder, disappeared all at once. Tony had never been so long without a hallucination since they had started when he was seven.

On the one hand it was great. It meant no more drugs, therapy or people worrying about his fragile sanity. On the other, it was as if he were suffering post-hallucination stress. It took him too long to adjust to the feeling of not having to expect his mind potentially breaking at any second.

He was missing the company his fucked up psyche offered him as well, which was ridiculous, considering his hallucination friend was only present periodically.

On the brighter side, his initial freak out was only minor and Pepper had long since grown used to having to deal with him prior to losing his symptoms all over again. It happened every time he took his meds, after all. _Post-pill depression_ , indeed.

\--

Tony was in his lab when he heard a noise, some words spoken far away, too distant to fully make out.

 _Please, don't,_ he heard.

 _...glorious purpose,_ was next, after a long pause.

_...glad tidings..._

The tones were soft, familiar. The voice. But they also sounded remote enough that Tony didn't worry about them too much. He might have just left the TV on upstairs or something similarly idiotic. If anything else happened that were more obviously do to with his hallucinations, he'd tell Pepper.

_...You will know peace._

\--

It felt almost like relief when he picked up the phone and informed the CEO of Stark Industries he needed his meds.

"How bad?" She asked, preparing herself for the worst. And after so much time, perhaps it was a sensible question to ask. His relapses were always worse the longer the break between them.

"Visual," he admitted, not talking about the earlier incident of auditory since it might not have been anything. "But it's only a tiny little hallucination. Just one of the pictures on the file Coulson gave me looks like _him_."

"Your hallucination?"

"Yep. And since that's highly unlikely, I'm going to take it as a bad sign."

To be fair, this whole situation seemed highly unlikely. The file contained things about a physicist turning into a gamma-charged mutant monster, and a god from Norse mythology paying a visit to Earth. The file even said they'd found _Captain America_ and awoken him up from a state of frozen suspension in time.

That was all Howard had ever wanted in life. Howard swore by the fact Captain America would come back. Which half led Tony to believe that everything on this file was absolute bull, including the files on Romanoff and Barton. Whilst he could believe their stories well enough, it all seemed just a little too much out there, and knowing Tony, with his imagination and fucked up mental state, this could all very well be the worst delusion he'd had yet.

"I need my meds _now_ ," he emphasised, even just to make sure that at least some of this was real and he wasn't, in all actuality, just staring into empty space with drool dripping down his chin.

"I'll get you some, but you have to be patient."

There was a reason there was no meds in the tower, involving the fact that they had just moved in and Tony had been fine these last few years. It'd take a while to get his prescription filled therefore.

The next day found him in Germany, after hacking into the SHIELD communications and figuring out that this is where the action was about to go down.

Though he managed to announce his arrival with some self-inserted theme music and one heck of an entrance, Tony took a brief moment after aiming his weapon to stare and consider the fact he should have waited for his anti-psychotics before diving headfirst into the strangest and most awkward situation the world had ever seen.

Captain America, Iron Man and a SHIELD agent hovering in a futuristic little jet surrounded a horned Norse god who came through, attempting to invade Germany with a bit of murder and some terrorising. It was a good show, but hardly likely to work. The idiot hadn't put much thought into it, obviously. Tony wondered how tactless it would be to make a World War II joke with Captain America right there.

The entire scene before him almost convinced the inventor he wasn't in the middle of a paranoid delusion, simply because this was all too stupid for a mind like Tony Stark's to conjure.

"This is happening, right?" He asked JARVIS privately, and JARVIS confirmed the readings as matching to reality. Not that it really helped Tony any, since he was just as liable to make JARVIS say that in his mind as JARVIS would in truth. What Tony wouldn't do for some Thorazine in that moment.

The god, Loki, lifted his hands in defence, and a golden light took away his flamboyant, evil overlord accessories, leaving his face uncovered and eyes clearly glancing between the two superheroes looming over him. Tony's mind stuttered to a halt, and it was then when he decided that he was just about ready to sign everything since he lit up the Stark Tower off as complete twaddle.

"Did you see that?" He asked Captain America, who nodded very seriously before hauling Loki up. The god didn't resist, nor complain when the super-soldier's hand clamped too hard around his upper-arm.

Left behind was Tony, faceplate stubbornly remaining fixed over his face so he could have a meltdown in privacy.

"Pepper," He said when JARVIS helpfully put a call through to her. "I _need_ those drugs. I think this is getting worse."

"Just keep calm." She instructed. "Happy's on the job." Which was actually a very soothing notion. Happy got stuff done. "Do you have an address?"

Yes. Tony knew where the SHIELD helicarrier was, approximately, and he knew it was also where he was headed for next. The Avengers Initiative was coming to a head, and the logical subsequent step was finally bringing them all together, barring SHIELD Agent Barton who was down for the count.

"I'll send Happy as close as he can get." Pepper promised, since Tony warned the helicarrier was going to be over water.

"I'll meet him there." Tony promised, before trailing into the waiting plane.

"Hey, Nat," he greeted cheekily to the pilot, who glared at him warningly. "Loving the new do." Because when had Tony ever felt the urge to stop whilst he was still breathing?

"Stark, it may not be wise to be on this mission if you're in the middle of a psychotic break."

The inventor gaped at the assassin, who merely twitched an eyebrow in challenge. "Did you hack into my phone?"

"You were showing symptoms." She shrugged. "I just wanted to check-up on your wellbeing."

"How could you even see symptoms? You were sixty feet up in the air! I don't even show symptoms beyond chatting to thin air." He said defensively. "You just hacked into my phone because I hacked into your ride."

"You changed the music." She pointed out, as if it were a crime worthy of corporeal punishment.

"Is there an issue here?" Captain America said, his face heinously young and his hair looking prim and perfect despite his scuffle with a god. With every second that passed, reality was looking to be an ever more distant concept.

"No, we're leaving now." Natasha dismissed them both, turning back to the controls and sending the ship back into the air. "I suggest you all get comfy."

Tony did as told, sinking in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the plane to their deranged prisoner. Loki, for his part, pointedly ignored him.

On any other occasion, Tony felt like he would have spent the majority of the flight needling Captain America and trying his hardest to piss the national hero off. Perhaps point out that he's old, or not in his own time period, or was trapped in a glacier for seventy years. It was the sort of thing Tony did. And don't get him started on all the virgin jokes he was just _itching_ to make. The tough time would be picking which one to start with.

But that was another place, another time, another universe. Tony, right here and right now, was more than content to stare at the alien who sat, securely strapped in, and didn't return the eyeballing.

On the outside, Tony was perfectly calm, if acting a little on the creepy side. He figured that if Steve got freaked out then Natasha would explain that Tony wasn't right in the head, and if Loki got freaked out, then good.

On the inside was a different story. Tony was pretty much one-hundred percent certain of the fact that if he hadn't already been in the middle of a very serious episode, now would be about the time his hallucinations all came rushing back.

Because it wasn't that Tony was having trouble wrapping his head around aliens and gods and surprise should-be-dead heroes from yesteryear coming back to haunt him. Rather, it was that Loki, a psychopathic murderer playing a pathetic bid to take over the world, looked just like the man from his hallucinations. All Tony was clinging to now was the possibility that maybe, just _maybe_ , he wouldn't sound like the voice did too.

Tony made it a habit of looking to Captain America periodically, just to make sure that he could see Loki as Tony could. Although Steve's face became more concerned every time he caught the inventor doing it, Tony found that Steve could most definitely perceive the god. Which meant one of three things:

One - Tony was _genuinely_ off his rocker and no drugs could save him now. He was imagining everything and needed to get to a hospital, pronto.

Two - He had seen Loki before when he was young (possible, if the Norse deity ever paid America a visit beforehand) and it had been an image he later incorporated into his own psyche for personal use. It was something Pepper had suggested once before in the past.

Three - The scariest of all possibilities: he was imagining nothing. This was not a psychotic break at all, and reality was very firmly trying to twist his head from his shoulders. What that meant in the long run, and why he had started hallucinating Loki when he was a kid, was too daunting to dwell on. Which, unfortunately, Tony Stark had a nasty habit of doing; scratching at scabs he knew he shouldn't pick.

Thunder interrupted his musing, startling them all.

"Where did that come from?" Tony heard Natasha curse, whilst Steve looked to Loki.

"Scared of a little lightning?" He wondered, and Loki smiled thinly.

"I'm not _overly_ fond of what follows." He admitted, and his voice - by god, his _voice_.

"Send an urgent message to Pepper would you?" Tony asked JARVIS, drawing attention from his fellow passengers, which was not long maintained since in the next instance the door was open and the big, famous blond from ancient legends stormed in and tore Loki from his seat before tearing away into the night.

It was a little funny, but in a way it came as a comfort to the billionaire, since he had always imagined Thor of old to be a ginger.

"He just stole a key player in my life-long delusions." Tony complained when Steve told him they needed a plan of attack. "At this point, my plan _is_ attack." Steve could take that how he wanted to, since Tony had long since left him behind in favour of trying to follow where Norse bastards had disappeared off to.

\--

 _...they kill each other in droves_... He heard Loki say passionately, the volume increasing the closer Tony flew towards them. So, it _had_ been the voice when Tony had heard it in the workshop two nights ago. Likely, it had been Loki's voice. Though why Tony could hear it in his head was a mystery. He'd only ever heard conversation deliberately directed at him before, and never when his apparent hallucination had things to say to other people.

Then he barrelled into Thor, taking the unknown threat away from his phantasm, since it was unclear what the alien's intention was. With the way he was holding that hammer, Tony was going to go out on a limb and suggest that it was nothing good.

 _I'm listening_ , he heard, but it was not for him.

"Do not touch me again." That, on the other hand, was.

"Then don't take my stuff." He returned, glancing over his shoulder to where his hallucination was settling in for a show. "Do you want some popcorn with that, dear?" He said, voice Loki-bound, and a well-known laugh tinkled its way to Tony's ears. He'd sounded the same when they'd tried to make omelettes together. The hallucination turned out to be a shit teacher, as Pepper would attest to.

That's perhaps what Tony got for listening to a _hallucination_. How was he supposed to know anymore than Tony did?

And then Thor attacked him, and not once did Loki raise a finger to help, the bastard.

\--

He didn't go back on the plane after the battle had wound down, and that was mostly to do with the unease that was still sparking between Thor and himself. With a knowing look from Loki, his eyes twinkling as he cast Tony under his gaze, Tony swore to himself and set off for the helicarrier, dialling for Coulson.

Coulson praised him for it in his usual monotone. "I'm surprised, Stark." He said, meeting Tony at the landing site of the ridiculous, flying contraption. Even with all their so-called stealth tech, they were as subtle as an anvil dropping in the middle of a crowd. "You're usually the type to drop in on a whim, just to see people get angry."

"I do like pissing SHIELD off," he said - something he'd discovered after meeting Fury for (apparently) the second time and learning Natalie Rushman was not all she seemed.

"I know." Coulson nodded, leading him inside. "Did you want to get changed?"

He led Tony to a private room, set up solely for storage of an Iron Man suit. Tony decided to not point out how creepy this was, especially since he could see that Coulson had his taser about his person. He didn't want to go offending the agent with trash talk about his secret clubhouse when Coulson was armed and dangerous.

To be honest, Tony had wanted to talk to Coulson specifically, which was why he had called ahead. Everything about the man was so incredibly _real_ , and he made Tony feel all the more insane for how sensible the man was. Tony found it a comfort, in its own way. With Coulson acting in his usual, unruffled way, he made the fantastical situation the inventor had found himself seem in all the more rational. He was precisely what Tony needed in place of his antipsychotics.

Also, there was that issue with the cellist in Portland. Tony was not about to let that one drop. While Coulson could only do so much to make the world seem round as it was supposed to be, trying to sort out his love-life was one of those magnificent distractions Tony found himself getting lost in. For a short while, in the walk they took to be reunited with the team who were all clustered in the main control room of the helicarrier, Tony felt a little better.

\--

And then he met Dr. Bruce Banner, which turned out to be a defining moment in Tony's life.

"What actually happens when you go all...?" Tony paused, before making a vague gesture towards the creature Bruce became. He had already praised the man on how much Tony appreciated his work as well as his unusual talent, and the doctor looked a little put out by the billionaire's forwardness. However, after a moment of hesitation he replied nicely enough.

"My eyes go green," he admitted, "Along with my skin."

Tony grinned suddenly, halting the physicist in his tracks as Dr. Banner eyed him warily.

"No kidding! That's what _I_ do. Not the skin thing, but my eyes."

"What?" Bruce blinked, whilst Tony took a moment to appreciate how crazy that had sounded.

"I have Dissociative Identity Disorder." He explained with an absent wave of his hand. "And with it my eyes change colours. No one is quite sure why, or even _how_ since DID doesn't work that way, but then with my schizophrenia I shouldn't really have it in the first place."

"Schizophrenia?" Steve echoed, and it had all but Natasha turning to him in confusion.

Tony spread his arms. "Surprise. I look good for it, I know."

"Speaking of," Coulson interrupted, having turned his back from the group when a phone call came in a few moments earlier. "Miss Potts says Mr. Hogan is en route."

"Perfect." Tony grinned, grabbing him and asking the agent to lead him out. This was not because he didn't know the way - his memory was better than just alright - but because he still needed that bit of reality to cling onto until he had his meds. "I've just got to pop out to get my meds and make sure you're aren't all a crazy paranoid delusion."

"You do that, Stark." Fury allowed.

"I'll be right back."

"Take your time. _Please_. It's not like we have a psychotic god on our hands or anything."

"What can I do about that? Throw my issues at him? Perhaps we could share crazy stories." Tony said, before disappearing with Coulson around a corner, the door closing smartly behind him.

\--

When Tony had gone, the only one of the assembled Avengers who didn't have questions to throw Fury's way was Agent Romanoff who was three step ahead of everybody else in the room, and then some.

"I'd have never have guessed he was schizophrenic." Bruce was marvelling, musing over the brief conversation he had only minutes before with the famous playboy inventor and seeing no signs of him being mentally ill. A little unhinged and manic, perhaps, but Bruce had been to some of Stark's lectures at conventions and surmised that was how the man usually was.

Fury replied, "It's weird to see him talk to thin air, sure. But moving on."

They all had their own ideas about schizophrenia, from Thor who wasn't completely sure what it was, to Steve who had certain ideas of mental illness from the forties when it still wasn't something people spoke about. For his part, Bruce was still reeling.

"He must be so high-functioning." He continued, much to the director's aggravation. Despite this, he still answered.

"He is. Stark on a good day does stupid things like become a superhero, privatise world peace and create a new element."

Well, colour Bruce impressed. He knew all of that of course, but it was still something that surprised him when he stepped back and looked over what Stark really _had_ done for the world since he'd come back from the incident in Afghanistan. However, Fury was very quickly revising his words.

"Actually, thinking about it," he said carefully, "Those were all incredibly _bad_ days for Stark. They were times usually followed by a manic episode, a major psychotic turn or an emergence of his more abrasive green-eyed counterpart. To be honest, I don't think I've ever had occasion to meet Stark on a good day." He paused, just to let that sink in for everyone, himself included, before turning to the red-head at the table. "Agent Romanoff? You worked with him."

"When I worked with him it was his most serious break to date." She shrugged dismissively. "What with the pressure and his health at the time, I only had opportunity to observe Stark at his worst."

"He thinks we're a delusion. Are the pills going to help that?" Steve asked her, looking very serious about the welfare of his new teammate, even if the two of them hadn't gotten along thus far.

"Stark has great faith in his medication. He is a very rare example of a patient who has experienced treatment which has worked consistently and effectively every single time. He'll accept this is reality if nothing changes for him after he takes the antipsychotics."

"They sound pleasant."

"Better than electro-shock therapy." Natasha considered.

"Well, who can blame him?" Steve shrugged. "Even _I_ feel like half of this is a mad dream."

"You wish." Bruce smiled.

"Don't we all." Fury agrees. "Now, once again... moving _on_."

\--

Tony found great pleasure poking Bruce with sharp things, especially when Bruce started to return the gestures with a surprise elbow in his stomach.

"Ooh, are you trying to bring out _my_ green-'n'-mean side, Banner? Not going to work. I haven't had a change for years now."

"That's great." Bruce praised honestly, but it didn't stop him from trying to provoke the inventor anymore than the footage from Harlem stopped Tony.

And then Captain Tightpants had to come in with his sternest expression and give Tony hell for it. Bruce was laughing, for crying out loud! He was about as likely to hulk out right then and there as Steve was.

And then suddenly, everything was serious, and Tony wasn't quite sure how to deal with it.

He'd had his anti-psychotics by then, but everything still seemed a little strange. By the time he realised he had the entire crew arguing around him only a few hours later, whilst Steve got all in his face about how selfish he was, Tony had felt like the world had completely slipped away from his control. Maybe the drugs weren't working, which was a first for Tony, or maybe they were just having trouble kicking in. Either way, the universe still seemed too warped for his liking. If this _was_ reality, Tony wasn't sure whether he wanted anything to do with it. He'd gladly swap the real psychotic god for his gentle hallucination equivalent in a second.

And then Steve said something brutal enough to surprise the inventor for a second, who never thought the super-soldier may be for a second capable of it:

"Take away the suit and what are you?"

"A narcissistic schizophrenic with multiple personalities." Tony replied scathingly, instantaneously, and it had the intended effect. Steve looked apologetic for just a moment, as if he'd yelled at a paraplegic for not being able to run, or a blind man for not being capable of reading. Tony realised that he hated that more.

And then Tony's favourite hallucination blew up the ship.

\--

Tony told him to get to Stark tower pronto, raising his voice urgently when Steve asked why.

"What's going on, Steve?" Natasha asked as Barton grabbed his bow and quiver.

"Tony thinks Loki's going to attack from his tower. Cruel irony, apparently, and something Tony would do."

Natasha sent him a look Steve couldn't even begin to interpret. "Tony thinks himself worse than he is." She elaborated, which didn't really explain anything.

They made their way to the landing bay, expelling a pilot from his ship and allowing Hawkeye and Black Widow to take the reins.

Meanwhile, Tony had gone ahead, but they could spot him in the distance and it quickly became obvious that he could see them too as they took flight.

"You'd think he'd spent years working on that thing," Natasha said as Iron Man paused and gracefully doubled back just to check they were close behind him. He greeted them over the comms and changed the music again, much to the dismay of the team members inside.

"Didn't he?" Steve asked, intrigued by the apparently simple but no doubt criminally complex design of the flying armour.

"No." Clint replied in his partner's place. "No one is entirely sure what happened bar mister basket-case over there, but it only took him a few weeks, max. Or less, considering he also built the Arc Reactor at the same time."

"That thing in his chest?"

"That's the one."

"They were both creations of a desperate man in a harsh place," Natasha explained, and Steve had skimmed over the file and knew about the incident in Afghanistan. "And he was also experiencing a schizophrenic episode in the midst of everything else. It was during that time that his DID first became apparent, we think."

"I'd hate to see him on a good day, then." Steve considered as they watched Tony fly ahead.

\--

"Drink?" Tony said as soon as he came into the room, heading straight for the bar. Seriously, the sheer amount of shit he'd been expected to put up with sober these last few days was staggering, and he wasn't about to stand for another moment of it.

"I do hope that wasn't your appeal to my humanity." Loki said, coming in through the door to the lower balcony where he had been  standing, waiting patiently for Tony to arrive home.

"You're not human, so that's illogical." Tony pointed out, heading straight for the scotch and holding up the bottle. "Yea or nay?"

Loki didn't reply immediately, and was content to just watch Tony. Tony's hallucination had a habit of doing that too.

Eventually he pointed to the world outside Tony's window, and to the sprawling city Tony was actually rather fond of. From up here it was like he was standing on top of the planet, as if he could defend anyone on it from harm.

"The Chitauri are coming. They will be upon you shortly."

"No drink then." Tony surmised. "I'd have preferred to be a gentleman about this, but I'm also quite happy to threaten you."

This got the god's attention, and Tony poured his drink whilst slipping the homing bracelets about his wrists.

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"I don't know if you were there, but a few minutes ago a lunatic just went ahead and pissed off a whole heap of superheroes."

"Superheroes?" Loki questioned, sounding amused at the very notion. "What an interesting idea to put upon yourselves."

"I dunno, let's do a headcount: One, your brother, the demigod, who has this hammer which I've been told can only be picked up by the _worthy_ , so that makes him pretty heroic," And with his words Tony watched as Loki's persona melted away, and the sure stance he'd held faded to reveal an agitation which directly echoed what Tony was feeling precisely. Despite the fact there was half a room and a bar in between the two of them, and regardless of the fact that voice still did absolute wonders for his nerves, Tony wasn't about to make the mistake of being confident around the man who'd killed Agent Coulson in cold blood.

"There's the two master assassins, but you know Clint so I don't have to go into that one. He's not happy with you, by the way. And you met Natasha, too. She's good, isn't she?

"Then there's Captain America. I know he doesn't look like too much, but you've already had a scuffle with him down in Germany. Yeah, Germany and Cap don't really go so well together. That's kinda like putting an apparent schizophrenic in a reality where gods are real and legends from seventy years ago come back to tap-dance all over their psyche." He glared at Loki pointedly, who simply smirked at him coldly. "I'm not going to thank you for that."

"I didn't expect thanks." Loki informed him blithely. "I'd much rather your compliance."

"And how do you expect to get that, moonbeam?"

"I have an army."

"We have a Hulk." Tony reminded him, thinking back to the impressive creature dear, sweet Dr. Banner became when his nerves got a bit too twitchy.

"Oh, Tony," Loki said, approaching him and lowering his voice, and those soft drones were more than enough to make Tony want to do what he said even without the glow-stick of destiny. "You wouldn't deny me anything."

And then there was a _clink_ as the tip of the alien's spear collided with Tony's Arc Reactor. He tensed, waiting for the inevitable, but there was no immediate effect. Tony looked up to Loki for guidance, just to see that the god was as mystified as he was, frowning down at the weapon like it had betrayed him.

And once again, he brought down the spear, gentler this time, upon Tony's chest. To no avail.

"This usually works." He said, almost apologetically, as Tony shrugged.

"Well, performance issues. Not uncommon. One out of five-" but he was then seized around the neck and thrown to the floor.

"JARVIS!"

Loki grabbed him again, and Tony had that same instinctive terror he was so used to; the one produced when hallucination he'd trusted so much, who said he wouldn't turn on him, did precisely the opposite.

"You're not crazy, Stark," Loki could apparently read his expression and leaned in very close to hiss in his ear. "It was me. It was always me."

"I figured," Tony struggled to say against the hand slowly crushing his windpipe. "Making a kid think he's insane? Definitely up your street."

"That wasn't why I did it, but it was a pleasant by-product." Loki admitted, before his smile became toothy and violent. "Perhaps now is the time to put that tortured child out of its misery." Then Tony heard one very distinctive word amid all surrounding chaos of this thoughts. Something alien, and most certainly well-known: _Outside._

And the next motion had Tony smashing hard against his own window, breaking through and falling headfirst towards the ground.

The inventor, however, was a genius, and knew Loki better than the god would have liked as soon as Tony realised he was using Stark tower for a base. The parallels between the two of them were glaring in their obviousness, and Tony wondered how much that had to do with Loki being in his head since he was a child.

That would take some getting used to, that was for sure. Further, he had some questions he wanted answering sooner rather than later.

But it meant that he had already thought ahead to any dangers Loki could put him in, and being on the top floor of a skyscraper gave way to some fairly interesting ways of dying. Falling was in the top three, so Tony had prepared appropriately. His newest suit was beautifully engineered, if he did say so himself, and caught him just in time to not grind himself and several unlucky pedestrians below into the pavement.

"And there's one other person you pissed off." Tony spat, coming to level with the window where Loki was glaring up at him, spear raised. "His name was Phil."

And perhaps there would have been an epic showdown, ending in blood and tears and a lot of pain, had it not been for the sky opening up and from the portal from another pocket of space rolled out a not inconsiderable amount of hostile aliens toting threatening weapons and unleashing them upon the general populous.

"I'm seeing that right?"

"Need I remind you that you're not actually schizophrenic, Stark."

"And I still need a moment to try and work that out of the last thirty-five years of my life, thank you _very_ much. And there is an army right there. I need to go. Stay right here."

 _No_ , the voice said in his head, but Tony was too distracted to worry about Loki now.

\--

A nuke? Who sent a _nuke_ to New York? When this was over, Tony was going to have a very serious talk with SHIELD about their priorities. "I'm on it." He said, meaning _I am in so much shit, and so are you_.  He didn't immediately warn the Avengers of his plan, eying the portal as he went to grab the bomb, wondering if he could get away with it without drawing too much attention. But no luck.

"I can close it!" Natasha exclaimed, and Steve encouraged her to do so.

"Guys, I've got a bomb coming in." Tony interrupted, and it stopped the Avengers in their tracks.

"Are you sure?" Steve asks, and okay, _maybe_ it sounded a little paranoid: the secret governmental body Tony hated suddenly deciding to just nuke the greater Manhattan area. It sounded straight out of an inpatient's conspiracies. Too bad he wasn't actually crazy.

" _Yes_ , I'm sure. Just give me a minute." That was all he had anyway.

 _Stark_? Loki said suddenly, as if feeling his spike of fear. Tony couldn't actually see him, and his voice sounded weaker than usual, but it was still clear as a bell in the back of his mind and Tony couldn't help but listen to it. _What are you doing?_

"Saving our skins, you godforsaken son of a bitch."

 _Saving **our** skins,_ Loki emphasised.  _Not yours_.

"Yeah, not mine." Tony spat bitterly. "Thank you for all the years of therapy and meds which had some _very_ nasty side effects, you utter-" His last, creative curse was cut off when the air was sucked from his lungs, and he released the nuke by simply falling away from it. The suit cut out, control was lost, and he felt his mind collapsing as he stared into the noiseless void, dropping through nothing into nothing. Slowly, he felt his eyes close.

But then the air rushed back into his body, and he felt himself strong enough to twist the Iron Man suit even without the aid of JARVIS, which was definitely a rather fortunate first. In anyone else, at any other time, perhaps Tony would have believed that it was a final adrenaline rush before he died, but it was Tony. Of course it wasn't so simple. He could feel it as much as he was sure Bruce could feel his own physical changes, as his body went through minute transformations, a side effect of borrowing someone else's powers. And with it, he could point himself straight out of the void before the explosion caught up with him, and hope that Natasha wouldn't close the portal before he managed to escape.

It was a startlingly near thing, he saw, and though he couldn't blame his teammates, it still stung. What overrode that, however, was the panic that JARVIS wouldn't reactivate - though he did, just in time for the suit to reactivate and thrust him back up in to the air before he was forced to show his best impression of road-kill across the New York City pavements.

"Did you see that?" He said elatedly into the comms, to rather a lot of shouting on the other end.

"It's a relief to see you're alive," Thor said. At least someone was nice.

"Give me a minute, 'kay? Then you can all yell at me." He said, shooting off towards the tower before anyone could protest. He had a few select words he wanted to have with the psychopath who almost had him killed.

\--

He found the god in a Loki-shaped crater, and if that didn't even slightly elevate his mood he might as well switch his suit for an eye patch and start calling himself Fury right then and there.

"You alright there, Vixen?" He smiled, and as soon as he spoke Loki started pulling himself up awkwardly, hissing every so often when he pulled on a particularly sore spot. "What even happened?"

"Your pet beast-"

"Colleague." Tony corrected him sharply, ignoring the evil-eyes he got in return as the god tried to dust the concrete off himself. "Bruce is a colleague, as is his very charming alter-ego."

"I think I'd like that drink now." Loki snarled, glancing to the bar which was thankfully only slightly battered in the scuffle.

"I hope none of my vintages are broken," Tony muttered, making a beeline to behind the counter to check everything was in order as Loki hobbled over to sit on one of the opposing chairs. "Pepper will kill me."

"That she would." Loki agreed vaguely, eyes casting around the tower as if he hadn't stopped to fully appreciate it before.

"Sorry, the place is a bit of a mess." Tony told him, getting out two miraculously surviving crystal glasses and filling them generously with the strongest stuff he could find. They both needed it after the day they were having. "Some jerk came in with a vendetta against the planet and had a tantrum."

"Scoundrel." Loki returned dryly.

"So why did you do it?" Tony asked, not inquiring after the reasons behind the invasion, nor the way he made Tony believe he was schizophrenic for most of his life, though he did have a multitude of questions lined up to be asked about that little beauty. Loki knew what he meant. He meant just minutes ago, when Tony was in the void, and when he felt that rush of life he associated with his DID. Which was also pointedly not real.

"I invested a lot of time into you." Loki said vaguely. "It would be a shame to lose all that hard work over something so idiotic."

"Stopping the city from annihilation was idiotic?" Tony scoffed. "Try, _invasion of the Earth_ with only a small stream of soldiers leaking out from one teeny-tiny portal. _That_ was idiotic. That, in fact, should be the dictionary definition." He eyed the god for his reaction, but Loki only blinked at him. "Wait, seriously? You're joking." Because those eyes told a story: Loki had _engineered_ this battle to be lost. He perhaps hadn't expected the Avengers, but he had known there was going to be some form of defence from the planet, and he'd tried his best to make sure Earth had just as many advantages as he could give it without fully giving the game away.

"Why?" Tony then asked, because that was the newest most burning of queries. Loki, however, didn't answer.

Tony handed him his drink, their fingers brushing as Loki reached out to take it. It made Tony realise something; that he had never actually touched Loki in all these years. He'd just assumed he was a hallucination, so made no attempts to treat him as if he were physical. Tony reached out now, just pressing his fingers to Loki's shoulders, whilst Loki took a sip of his drink and raised an eyebrow at the inventor.

"You're actually real." Tony said, a little taken aback with sudden wonder.

"Did you doubt it?"

"Several times. I'm still not entirely convinced."

Loki hummed noncommittally, not keeping his attention on Tony at all. However, the human was not finished with his interrogation.

"I should have figured it out with the eyes thing. They're your colour."

"The eyes?" Loki inquired, and Tony waved vaguely to his own.

"When you give me that little god-boost to see me through, my eyes go green. Your colour." He pointed to the emerald irises Loki had, which, Tony realised, hadn't been green at all since the start of this entire fiasco. Which gave way to an interesting new set of theories.

"I never noticed I did that to you." Loki shrugged.

"And when I blacked out completely, that was you too, wasn't it? Just taking control of me."

"You were always panicking too much to get through it without severely harming yourself. Your survival instinct is appalling, Stark."

"I know." Tony said, gesturing to the now clear sky outside. "I just flew a nuke into the other side of space."

"I was simply ensuring your survival by temporarily taking you out of the picture. As I said, there has been too much time wasted on you."

"Why did you even bother? I was just a whiny kid."

"You were a lonely child," Loki corrected him sharply, before realising what he'd said. He seemed as taken aback by the vicious tone in his voice as Tony was. "It was due to your father." The god eventually revealed, further confusing the inventor.

"My dad? What, he asked you to make me insane?"

"No. I knew your father, in a way. I was interested in his work during the second world war."

"The Manhattan Project, or the Super Soldier Serum?" Tony scowled, wondering how much of his life would have been different if it hadn't been for that last one.

"Both." Loki said. "They were equally impressive for their time."

"Kinda like watching a monkey discover electricity to you, I bet."

Loki shrugged. "I suppose. However, I left for a while, returning to discover your father in disarray."

Tony snorted, swallowing his drink in one long gulp and pouring himself another one. "Tell me about it."

"And then I found out about you. Howard Stark was not dedicating himself to his role, too concerned with his work, and that was unfortunate. You were a promising child."

"And then you made me crazy."

Loki didn't look apologetic. Nothing about his story rang false with Tony, but it still didn't explain anything.

"I still don't understand."

Loki looked at him for a long moment, eyes clearer than Tony had ever seen them. "Then you never will."

"Did you know I was going to survive the fall when you defenestrated me earlier?"

"No." Loki admitted honestly.

"Then why did you care about me surviving the nuke?"

"Because you're mine, Tony. Only I can harm you."

Tony thought back to first meeting Thor, standing opposite in the middle of a forest and telling him sharply, _Don't touch my stuff_.

"We're coming up, Tony," Iron Man heard through the comms, as Steve and the other Avengers started to clamber up stairs to join them. Tony turned to Loki and informed him of what was happening.

"Do you want to get back in the crater? Clint might get a laugh out of it at least."

"I'd prefer to keep my dignity."

"Yeah, no. Sorry, Dancer, but there's not a lot of that left." Tony grinned. "I have security cameras."

Loki put down his glass heavily on the countertop, and the inventor became serious again.

"So what now?" He asked.

"I'll be taken back to Asgard."

"Are you going to be okay?"

Loki shot him a look, and Tony shrugged. "You've been with me my whole life. I'm allowed to care about my hallucinations."

"Well, there will be no more of them." The god said pointedly.

"Even if I do something _really_ stupid?"

"Even if you die in the middle of a desert a second time." He snapped, pushing away from the bar and walking towards the centre of the room. Tony was scrambling after him a second later.

"Whoa, whoa, wait," he said, as he grabbed Loki's sleeve and every part of his life very neatly clicked into place. "That was you? You saved my life?"

The god immediately tugged his arm away. "I regret it now."

"No, you don't." Tony said dismissively, moving on before  Loki had time to defend his villainous ways with a rant about his evilness and evil plots or whatever it was villains ranted about. "You need to stop. I swear I'm a big boy and I can look after myself. Especially now I realise I was never mentally ill in the first place."

Loki glared at him, and Tony shrugged expressively.

"If it makes you feel better, I promise not to be too reckless if you promise not to try and take over the world again."

"That's a lie." Loki hissed. "How about, you continue being an idiot and eventually get yourself killed, and I'll go and get locked up in a prison cell for the next thousand years. Do we have a deal?"

"You drive a hard bargain." Tony quipped. "You want a top-up before you get dragged off by your brother?"

Loki tensed before Tony realised his blunder, but neither of them said anything about it. Slowly, Loki nodded.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much. They'll skin me too when they find us like this."

After Tony had refilled their glasses, he sat on the floor with the sofa at his back - the seat covered in dust and debris and rendered utterly useless. Opposite him was the window, which was shattered, gaping and letting in the chilly breeze of the strange post-battle air. Loki joined him, sitting at his right, after collecting his own drink.

"I could just leave." He pointed out.

"That's not part of the plan, though, is it?"

"No. Also, I would be bereft of this alcohol."

"And wonderful company." Tony inserted, receiving a snort from the god in reply. "Hey, you kept on coming back to see me. You can't hate me _that_ much."

"I was just making sure you were still breathing. I don't trust you on your own."

"You're not the only one. But you have to admit that you did occasionally come down just to see me. We made breakfast together, remember? We scared the leggy blond I was with when I woke up to see you lurking at the foot of my bed."

"You were going to kick her out anyway."

"You _were_ more fun." Tony admitted, before asking something which had been niggling at his mind since he'd found out the truth. "Why do you leave every time I took the pills?"

"I translated it to mean you did not desire my company anymore."

"That's not true."

"So, you did?" Loki extrapolated, with a hint of disbelief.

Tony nodded, gulping down the scotch. "Yeah. All the time."

"That would be impractical for the both of us, Stark."

"Maybe, but that didn't stop me wishing for it. You were my favourite. I loved having hallucinations."

Loki still didn't look any more emotional than he had done moments before, but there was some amount truth in his voice this time when he said, "I'm sorry, Tony."

And Tony didn't doubt him for a second. Not even when the Avengers burst through the doors, terrified for their teammate's safety and Loki immediately snapped into his previous role, back to playing the villain where, for a moment there, he had been Tony's friend.

\--

Tony couldn't do anything to stop Loki from being taken away from him when Thor sent them both back to Asgard, but he'd like to think that if he could've, he would've.

Instead, he returned to the tower with Bruce, was greeted by Pepper's arms wrapping tightly around his neck. After, he immediately cancelled all of his prescriptions.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to actually do one where Tony is really mentally ill. But this was not that day. 
> 
> Excuse: I couldn't really figure out a way of reasonably slipping in the fact Loki is a father himself, and actually, probably a better one than Howard. Which was generally why I thought Loki would look after Tony - Tony became his as soon as Howard started ignoring him.


End file.
